Consumerism: an exhausted modus operandi of capitalism

The current level of consumption is reflected directly in the environmental imbalance reached the planet: left demands and shortage of natural resources to provide them. Whereas nature is the source of raw material that gives rise to more and more products, you will need to consume less. However, many people still fail to see these two sides, that converge on a single vertex. They feel happy and gratified when they are buying when they are practicing consumerism, without taking account of their choices have a direct relationship with the environment. Individual choices determine the impact that each will cause to the Earth, the House mother of us all.

In this interview, psychologist Domenico make this disgusting noise Hur, masters and Ph.d. in Social Psychology from USP, discusses the phenomenon of consumerism.

Garbage’s blog – we are a capitalist and consumerist society. We received all sorts of incentives to consume, clearly and also subjective, imperceptible. Is it possible to change that culture? How?

Domenico Make This Disgusting Noise Hur-Yes. Call it capitalist subjectivity that we live today, consumerism, a quantitative logic, competitiveness, to feud with each other and to the exploitation of surplus value, is the worker, or of nature. In this culture we live in we assume a predatory place before others and to nature itself. Thus, it is necessary to set up a new subjectivity, which circulates more cohesive social relations and a new relationship with the environment, no longer from the point of view of the farm, but a conscious occupation.

Blog-for many people, buying gives pleasure and joy. How consumerism is detrimental? There is happiness out of consumption?

Domenico Hur-the individual consumer is a production of capitalist society. There is an imperative that people should consume more and more, and an association between consumption and happiness. However, it is an association produced by market for people to buy and thus keep the gears turning industries. Currently, polls show that the increased consumption does not indicate greater happiness. I understand that the consumerism does not bring good affections, but just experiences of immediate gratification, soon to fade away in the air. For example, the children of this generation have and consume more toys than 20 years ago and I don’t see that are happier for it. On the contrary, are often apathetic, with less tolerance for frustration. Happiness is not linked to consumption, so much so that affective experiences with others, get to know new places, bring more intensive experience than buying.

Blog-recent credit protection service and the National Confederation of store managers pointed out consumer conscious profile growth, less consumerist. Where would be the origin of this behavior change?

Domenico Hur – This conscious behavior comes from numerous variables. First, an expanded conception of ecological, which notes that the pace of environmental exploitation, of nature, of springs, is taking the planet to a crisis of sustainability. Second, a clearer perception of social relations, with the awareness that one should not consume products to be socially legitimated marks, or chic, to make a statement before the other.

The recent scandals of famous clothing brands using slave labor, served to decrease the fetish. And, third, a self-analysis of their own individual existence, that the promise of happiness, consumption hinged brought by capitalism, did not materialize. On the contrary, there is a crisis of the capitalist subjectivity, because the volume of work and consumption only produced a subjectivity tired, exhausted and in debt.

We urgently need new forms of sociability and an alternative to the capitalist subjectivity. It’s something we’ve worked on my last book “Critical Policy Psychology: insurgencies in Latin America”.

Domenico Make This Disgusting Noise Hur

Psychologist, master and Ph.d. in Social Psychology from USP, with doctoral internship at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Associate Professor of the Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG) and a member of the crisis (núcleo de estudos e pesquisas criticism, Insurgency, subjectivity and emancipation. Author of works in the area, being the last of them, Critical Policy Psychology: insurgencies in Latin America.